1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle periphery motoring device which monitors a vehicle periphery by detecting a monitoring object located in a periphery of a vehicle according to a distance information by a radar mounted in the vehicle and a captured image by an imaging unit mounted in the vehicle, and a vehicle periphery monitoring program and a vehicle periphery monitoring method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been disclosed a vehicle periphery monitoring device (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2006-151125) which includes both a radar and a camera mounted in a vehicle, determines an image area where an image portion of an object is estimated to be present in a captured image by the camera on the basis of a distance detection data by the radar, and performs an image processing in which an image portion of a monitoring object is extracted from the image area (image processing area) serving as a target. device, an area with a spreading in accordance with a beam profile of the radar (a two dimensional spreading in a cross section orthogonal to the transmission direction of the beam) centered at a measuring position where an object is detected to be present is determined as the image processing area according to the distance detection data. By defining the image processing area, it is expected to reduce time needed to perform the image processing thereon shorter than an image processing by extracting an image portion of a monitoring object with respect to the whole captured image by the camera.
However, the beam profile of the radar varies according to the superficial reflection characteristics of an object. Therefore, when an image area is determined for extracting an image portion of a monitoring object on the basis of a distance information of an object detected by the radar, there may have problems such as a part of the image portion of the object may not be included in the image area if the object is difficult to reflect the radar beams.